Re: self-sufficiency

I think what is important in this discussion is the
following:

The problem is the solution.

Here we have huge expenditures to build a city, verses
an individual that could pack dirt in tires on their
new plot of land.  The importation of food is clearly
a vulnerability to city life; and frustrating to walk
home with.  There is no affordable land here, so we
are stuck with the following problems:

At $600/mo for parking here at 55th and Madison, I
wouldn't think of driving to work and risk a total
$800/mo parking bill between uptown and downtown. 
There is a lovely bike trial up and down the west side
from tip to tip of the Island, so that is a start for
an alternative.  Rule of thumb here in a super sized
city:  "Don't own a car, just walk it.  Take the
subway if you really can't walk it, or forget about
it."  At $4000/mo for 2br rent, I can't afford to live
close enough to walk, so I take the subway part way
from my "bad neighborhood" $2000/mo apmt.

Growing food entails the use of rooftops and/or grow
lighting (very few apmts have the needed sun-light for
many food crops).  The problem with the roof involves
insurance companies and denizen sun bathing having
been identified as why insurance costs more if there
is any access to the rooftops.  NYC building codes
resist the concept of wind power on the rooftops, but
solar only helps negligibly in comparison.  Meanwhile,
CSA's and green markets only operate fully in the
summer months.

The glaring opportunities underneath these problems
are Zone 0 + 1 development, and lobbying for
greenroof/wind mill building codes for a city this
size.  For those here in NYC, please please work with
me to package workable solutions for the people of the
city.  Did I say please?  It's all well and good for
those fortunate enough to get to the country side,
which the city folk desperately need you in terms of
things like year round CSA's and green markets.

However, there are billions of people, not millions. 
Humans have far overextending themselves to keep
looking at this as people per acre problem.  This is
an equation of 6 billion and growing need to stop
over-populating and figure out how we can sustain
ourselves away from the natural world, but with how
the natural world works.  We need to be separated
because there are too many of us, but we need to bring
those components we need for survival into our
isolation.  We need, in effect, to learn to cage
ourselves into our own little zoo, otherwise known as
cities.

My building has 64 apartments with an average of 3
people per unit.  The apartments are big by Manhattan
standards, but are still not nearly large enough to
maintain the fl aura for food alone.  The funny thing
is that there is enough space to have fish tanks for
walls and, with edible fish, have enough protein
source to feed everyone, yet not space to grow the
plant population which that fish population could
support.  There is also a weight issue for most
buildings if this much water were applied to a closed
apartment ecosystem.  The power for grow lights would
have to come from Wind (plenty with vortical growth
factored in).

Any suggestions on other Urban Zone 0 or 1 concepts? 
Is it possible to have a gourmet, non vegan, meal on
less than an acre?  Contact me if you are interested
in ultra-urban permaculture applications.  I've lived
in several Northeastern US cities and NYC is a
completely different animal from what most think of
when the words urban and city are used.

The past is the past and most of these buildings where
created too long ago to apply to urban vs rural
thought experiments.  What could be applied today to
make a building for many people, vs many buildings for
many people?  Are we replacing suburban sprawl with
eco-village sprawl?  That sounds like an upgrade, but
isn't it really just playing games with people
density, which each person is comfortable with what
they are familiar?  What is an ideal human social
density without individual bias?  What is an ideal
ecological density?  What of the economics to keep it
fair balancing the two?

In hopes that I have not offended anyone...  In hopes
there is productive discussion...  In hopes we have
real ideas applying permaculture to repair the blight
known as totalitarian agriculture....

-Sean.

--- Tradingpost <tradingpost@...> wrote:

> 
> Granted that in general apartments and mass transit
> can be less wasteful of resources, but that's about
> it. Owen only looks at individual people's footprint
> living in those apartments and taking the subway.
> The big picture tells the opposite story. He forgets
> how all the infrastructure got there in the first
> place, and forgets that most of those millions also
> have to have someplace to work (terribly wasteful
> office buildings), and apparently that doesn't
> count. Owen doesn't consider the enormous cost in
> resources to build those apartments in Manhattan
> versus cost of apartments elsewhere. Or the
> unbelievably high cost of materials, fossil fuels,
> and labor to construct subways in Manhattan,
> compared to mass transit in most other places.
> 
> The argument on transportation and distribution of
> goods is equally questionable. Fighting traffic for
> hours in densely populated areas wastes fossil fuel
> just like driving all over the countryside.  And
> stats on electricity usage are misleading if we
> compare apples and oranges. City infrastructure
> itself burns enormous amounts of fossil fuel. I live
> in a large county with no stoplights or sidewalks at
> all, and only the county seat with 1,500 people has
> a municipal sewer system. And rural looks even
> better if the "electricity-hogging" farm produces
> more of its own needs (and its neighbors needs)
> instead of having them shipped in from far away.
> 

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